on set with the experts
John Colley - gaffer
Gaffer John Colley’s credits include ‘24 Hour Party People’ (2002), ‘A Cock and Bull Story’ (2005) and ‘Breaking and Entering’ (2006). More recently he’s worked on ‘Brick Lane’ (2007) and ‘Eastern Promises’ (2007).
The Duchess
The story unfolds at the end of the eighteenth century and tells the passionate and at times tragic tale of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
Beautiful, glamorous and adored by the public, Georgiana was the most fascinating woman of the age. But while her beauty and charisma made her name, her extravagant tastes and appetite for gambling and love made her infamous.
Married young to the cool and distant Duke of Devonshire, intimate of ministers and princes, Georgiana was a fashion icon, a doting mother and a shrewd political operator. But at the core of her story is a desperate search for warmth and love. From her passionate and doomed affair with Earl Grey to her complex ménage à trois with her husband and her best friend, Lady Bess Foster, The Duchess is a very contemporary tale of fame, notoriety and the search for love.
Starring Keira Knightley, (‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, ‘Pride & Prejudice’, ‘Atonement’) as the Duchess, Ralph Fiennes (‘Schindler’s List’, ‘The Constant Gardener’) as her husband the Duke; Hayley Atwell (‘The Line of Beauty’, ‘Cassandra’s Dream’, ‘Brideshead Revisited’) as her best friend Lady Elizabeth Foster; and Dominic Cooper (‘The History Boys’, ‘Mama Mia’) as her lover, Earl Grey.
